VLAN Switch (V-Switch) technology is a two-layer switching technology that has been developed in recent years. It changes the VLAN tag from global tag to local tag and replaces the MAC-based (media access control layer) switching with VLAN tag-based switching, and thus improves the scalability of the network.
However, the one-to-one switching between VLANs of the V-Switch limits the development of the multicast application. For instance, due to the reasons of bandwidth and safety, users need to be isolated by VLAN, but the data stream in the multicast VLAN can not be switched to multi-user VLAN by V-Switch technology.
While, another kind of multicast VLAN Register (Multicast VLAN Register, MVR) technology can realize the two-layer multicast that spans VLAN, but it employs MAC switching technology within the multicast VLAN which only supports the application scenario where all the multicast streams are in one VLAN. Meanwhile, the MVR mechanism probably forwards user-refused or unsafe multicast stream, such as those of other groups having the same mapping MAC address, as well as the multicast stream of other source addresses existing in the same group when the user designates the source address access group, to the user VLAN.
Therefore, it becomes an urgent technical problem to be solved currently that how to realize a VLAN-based switching technology not limited to transmitting the multicast stream within one VLAN.